


Signaling You Through the Flames

by TeaRoses



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 19:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeaRoses/pseuds/TeaRoses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Months after the Nonary Game, Seven is back to police work in Tokyo, trying not to think of the past or of Lotus.  When he realizes he needs a computer expert, he knows there is only one person he can count on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wasuremono](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/gifts).



> The "real" names of Lotus and her daughters came from the question and answer section of the 999 website. I chose the name Tanaka for Seven. All other characters mentioned in the fic, including "Emgreen," were created and named by me.
> 
> The title is from the poem "Poetry as Insurgent Art [I am signaling you through the flames]" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
> 
> I'd like to thank my beta for so much hard work. And also all the other people, online and off, who gave me help and suggestions for this fic. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

"The chief won't let Tanaka-san work this case. And we all know why."

Usually Tanaka ignored gossip. He was a good cop who did his job, and if someone had another story that was their problem. And this was Oshiro talking. The guy had a big mouth and most people at the station knew enough to ignore him.

"Yeah, anything to do with kids and Tanaka-san goes a little crazy." That was Sakeda, the new detective who had transferred in. Probably kissing up to Oshiro by agreeing. Laughter followed, and Tanaka breathed shallowly so no one would realize he was standing by the door and listening.

"This isn't even a kid. It's a teenage boy who probably ran away with a girl," Oshiro replied. "Kids today meet over the internet and do all kinds of stupid things. He'll be back."

Tanaka had heard about the case when he came in this morning. The parents had come into to their local substation late yesterday night. Their high school aged son had never made it home. They swore that he wasn't the type to just take off, that he was a dutiful son and a good student. The case was now in the hands of the officers here at the prefectural substation. The chief must be wondering about the possible fallout from a kidnapping case, even though they didn't think this was a kidnapping just yet.

"We still have to do our best to investigate," said Sakeda in a properly dutiful tone.

"Are you kidding? He's still a missing person, of course we have to. Plus his father is an executive at a big computer company. But let's not jump to any conclusions. We'll just talk to his friends from school, ask around the neighborhood to see if anyone living there seems suspicious. But I'll bet this isn't the first time he's pulled this kind of stunt. Probably the parents just finally got fed up and came to us."

Tanaka told himself that Oshiro was probably right. A teenager wasn't a young kid, not like the ones he'd dealt with on the boat during the days he wanted to forget. He'd probably come back within a few days, none the worse for wear. And his parents would thank the police even if they hadn't really done anything.

 _But what if he doesn't,_ a voice whispered in the back of Tanaka's mind. He tried to push it aside as he went back to his desk and started to work on his reports. That was mechanical, easy. Words went on paper, and didn't require him to remember all the disasters of his past. Not the boat, not his own Nonary Game.

He got through five pages of everything the department thought they needed to know, still sitting at his desk as most of the other detectives left for the day. Oshiro and Takeda were gone too, investigating the kid's disappearance or so Tanaka hoped.

He was one of the only people left in the station when the girl came in. She was in her late teens, tall and conservatively dressed. She approached his desk cautiously.

"May I help you?" Tanaka asked gently.

"I don't want to get in trouble, Inspector," she said, sounding uncertain and almost meek.

"I'm sure you're not in trouble, miss," he replied, though he wasn't sure of any such thing.

"It's not about me. It's about Ito Kazuya."

The missing kid. "The detectives in charge of the case are out. But I can take a message for them. Are you a friend of his? And what is your name?"

The girl bit her lip. "I don't want to give my name," she said. "And I don't know if I would say I'm a close friend of his. But two days ago he gave me this flash drive. He said it was important."

She removed a small, plain flash drive from her pocket and dropped it on the desk.

"He didn't tell me what was on it, but after he disappeared I tried to look. But the drive has a password, so I don't even know what's on it. I know he's in the poetry club at school, so I tried the names of a couple of his favorite poets, but nothing worked."

"I really need your name," Tanaka said, but the girl was already hurrying out of the station. He ran to the front door but she was gone into the crowd on the sidewalk by the time he got there.

If she was so desperate to preserve her anonymity, why hadn't she mailed the drive? Maybe this was urgent, much more important than she had let on. But there was nothing to do now but to wait for Oshiro or Sakeda to come back and give this to them.

For just a moment Tanaka remembered someone who could certainly solve the password problem. But the police computer experts wouldn't have a tough time of it either. Still, he did let his mind dwell on Lotus, just for a minute. He had her real name and phone number, and even her address. She had given them to him that evening in the desert, after the Nonary Game. Tanaka had told himself that he would phone her, just to reassure himself that he wasn't the only one who had gone on with his life after their little nightmare, but he had never done it. He didn't want to forget her, but she probably wanted to forget all of them and everything that had happened.

He still took a moment to remember the look on her face when she realized that the man called Seven had been the one who saved her child. Tanaka carried that moment around when his superiors berated him for caring too much. But maybe talking to Lotus more would have ruined everything. It didn't matter now, anyway. It had been many months since their escape and it was too late.

When Oshiro came in, Tanaka handed the flash drive over to him. He was angry that Tanaka hadn't gotten the girl's name, and even the description Tanaka was able to give didn't make Oshiro happy.

"We didn't have any luck in the Ito family's neighborhood. I was hoping that was a good sign, that he just went away by himself so there was nothing for the neighbors to notice. But now I don't know. I'll hand this over to the computer guys and see what's on it. If it's important, well... I just hope we can find that girl. She didn't even say if she went to the same school?"

"She barely said anything," Tanaka muttered. "And I'm on my way out of here."

Oshiro just nodded, and Tanaka headed out the door. By the time he got home he felt exhausted. He cooked a little ramen and ate it in front of the television. The drama he was watching was a guilty pleasure of his but tonight he just wasn't in the mood for it. His brain was too busy dwelling on what the computer techs were getting from the flash drive. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that this was important.

He tried to read a detective novel but couldn't get through that either. If he wasn't thinking about the Ito case he was thinking about Lotus.

 _Should have known it was a bad idea to remind myself of her,_ he thought as he finally laid down and tried to sleep. But he couldn't quite push the thoughts away. Instead they led into a fantasy that she was there with him. Nothing lewd, though he was only human. Just Lotus lying there too, her head pillowed on his chest, curled up against him and seeking his warmth.

 _She would never do that,_ he reminded himself. Not only because they weren't lovers, nor even friends, but because she probably would never forget herself and relax like that with him.

 _You don't even know her, really. You could be having this daydream about anybody._ That was true. And maybe grown men shouldn't daydream at all, yet he was sure he wasn't the only one. In fact he was nearly positive that he wasn't the only one out there, lonely in the night and thinking about a woman he once knew.

Just as he was falling asleep he thought of the picture of Ito Kazuya, gazing into the camera. It had been an ordinary picture of a teenage boy, but in Tanaka's memory he looked slightly lost, as if waiting for someone to save him.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning when Tanaka came to work he went straight to Oshiro's desk to ask about the flash drive. But the other detective just shook his head.

"Sorry. The computer guys cracked the password right away but it was nothing. Just pictures of pretty girls sitting around in their underwear."

"Why would he tell his friend it was important then?" asked Tanaka.

"Who knows?" said Oshiro with a shrug. "Isn't that what you thought was important when you were a teenage boy?"

Tanaka stopped himself from making a disgusted sound. It wouldn't help anything to start a fight with Oshiro.

"Look, can I have the drive?"

Oshiro gave him a leering grin and Tanaka clenched his fists. After a moment, Oshiro nodded. "Yeah, I guess. The computer guys are done with it and so am I. Though it isn't even your case. The chief will get on your ass if you waste time with it."

"That's my problem," said Tanaka.

The flash drive rode in his pocket all day. As he did a routine investigation of an armed robbery at an antique store, he thought of what Ito Kazuya might have been trying to hide. Surely it wasn't girls in lingerie.

But when he got home and looked at the flash drive, that was all he saw too. The pictures weren't particularly dirty, either -- nothing anyone would bother to hide. They didn't even seem good enough to bother saving, not that he was exactly a connoisseur.

There were a ton of pictures on the flash drive, and he was determined to look at all of them just in case, but after a while they started to blur in front of his eyes. Yet he couldn't let this go. Oshiro was ignoring something important.

He realized then what he was going to have to do and got out his cell phone. The number was still in there, of course. He let it ring.

"Moshi-moshi?"

Tanaka hesitated for a moment. "I'd like to speak to Kashiwabara-san, please," he said.

"Seven?" She sounded shocked.

"Yeah, it's me. But you can call me Tanaka if you prefer."

"Oh, of course. Well, how are you, Tanaka-san?"

"I'm doing okay. Same old, I guess? How are you?"

"I'm fine," she replied cautiously.

He suddenly realized that he really wanted to know how she was, what she had been doing. But there wasn't time.

"The thing is, unfortunately I didn't call just to catch up. I need some computer work. A flash drive -- I think there's something on it."

"Huh?"

"I'll explain when I see you. If I can see you." It occurred to him how demanding he sounded. "I can pay you."

"No, don't be ridiculous. I owe you a lot. You can come over with the flash drive. Where did you get it?"

"I'll tell you when I get there."

She gave him directions to her house and he started out. He was sweating, his hands trembling slightly on the wheel. That was ridiculous, of course. The only reason he was seeing her was to find out where Ito Kazuya was. She had her own life, was probably remarried by now or at least had a boyfriend, and certainly hadn't been thinking of him all this time.

When he got to her house she answered the door herself. She was wearing a white sweater and black pants, her long hair swinging free over her shoulders. He had expected to see her in the belly dancing outfit somehow, though he realized she certainly couldn't wear that all the time.

 _Well, at least you won't be as distracted by her this time,_ he thought to himself as he bowed and entered her home.

But as he removed his shoes, his hands were trembling again. She had the same scent, and moved in the same strong way. Lotus, as he often still called her in his head, was still beautiful, and still intimdating. Her house was like her, beautifully furnished in bright colors.

"Are your daughters here?" he asked nervously.

"No, they're both off at college. Nona's at Tokyo University, but Ennea's at an agricultural college."

Tanaka noticed her proud smile as she said that.

"I'm just alone," she added, answering the question he hadn't dared to ask.

"Yeah, me too," he said awkwardly. He then held the flash drive out on his palm, giving a brief history of how he had acquired it.

She raised her eyebrows. "So you really don't trust this Oshiro-san?"

"No, I do. But I think there's something wrong here. There's no way he gave that flash drive to his friend so she could protect his girly pictures."

"You have a good point. Well, here, I'll take it and see what I can do."

There was a computer workstation right in her living room, which he followed her over to it.

"I'm probably not even going to understand what you need to do with this," he admitted.

"That's okay," she reassured him. "I'm just going to look at it for hidden files. I can guarantee you that your colleagues already did that, unless they're really incompetent, but it's worth a try."

Tanaka walked around the living room as she proceeded, not wanting to look over her shoulder rudely. She talked to him as she was typing.

"So you've just been doing police work all this time," she said in a musing tone.

"What else?" he asked with a shrug. "That's all a guy like me is cut out for."

"I don't know about that," she said, as if she were privy to some hidden knowledge he didn't have about himself. "So you just happened to remember me when you saw this flash drive?"

How could he answer that? He could hardly say "No, I've thought of you most nights since I met you."

"I just-- I didn't forget you," he said softly, with a slight break in his voice.

"Yeah, well, I didn't forget you either," she said, but there was enough sarcasm in her tone that he couldn't tell whether she meant that was a good thing or not.

Kashiwabara made a clucking sound then. "I'm not getting anything," she said. "There are no hidden files on this drive; I can almost guarantee that. Unless this guy is a superspy with better equipment than me, maybe this is just what it seems to be. I'm sorry."

As he watched she began clicking through the same pictures he had just seen.

"Hot stuff," she said.

"It is?"

"Not really," she answered with a laugh. "Yeah, I don't get it either. What was he saving these for? You can find stuff like this everywhere on the internet."

Tanaka moved behind her now as she clicked through picture after picture. "Listen, could you go into the kitchen and make some tea?" she asked him. "I'm not sure where to go from here, but I'm not ready to give up yet."

He went into her kitchen, which was clean and neat but didn't seem stocked with much food or elaborate equipment. Tanaka had a vague memory of Kashiwabara saying she didn't cook much. The tea things were easy enough to find and soon he brought out tea for both of them.

She sat and waited for her cup to cool. He expected her to make small talk, for him to ask about her family and her to ask about his. Though that would be a small conversation on his end, as his parents had passed away and he wasn't sure he wanted to talk about Ryouta.

"So, you're still single," she said suddenly.

He took a sip of tea and nearly burned his tongue. "Well, yeah. I'm too focused on my work to do anything else."

She nodded. "You're a good cop. But everybody needs some kind of release, you know?"

Her word choice seemed loaded with implications he tried not to dwell on. "Maybe. But you're single too."

"A lot of men are intimidated by me," she admitted with a shrug.

"And you have no idea why?" he asked.

"Tell me why then," she responded, smiling.

He knew better than to say anything about her looks. "Some men don't like women who are smarter than they are," he said after a moment.

"So I should make myself look stupid to catch a man?" she asked.

"Hell no," he replied. "You should just find decent men."

"That's easy enough to say," she replied, and put the tea down.

Suddenly she stopped and looked at one picture. "There's something weird here."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I've gone through almost all these pictures. And there are no repeats except for this girl. And she isn't dressed like the rest of them. She's wearing a dress and she looks kind of embarrassed. And then she shows up again a few files later in what looks like the exact same picture."

"Shit, how did I miss that?" said Tanaka, looking over her shoulder.

"Miss what?"

"That's her. It's the girl who came into the police station in the first place. I guess I just didn't get that far into the files."

"Well, that's got to mean something," said Kashiwabara.

"Yeah, it does," he said back to her. "But they're already looking for the girl to see what she knows. I'm not sure how this helps."

"It makes me think, though," said Kashiwabara. "About steganography."

"What's that?"

"It's where you conceal a file completely. For example you can take a image file like this one, and you mess with how it's compressed, so you're hiding something. It's really hard to detect unless you have both pictures. But maybe that's exactly what happened here."

Hope rose inside Tanaka. Were they going to find Ito Kazuya? Whatever Kashiwabara was doing was taking a while, so he went to sit on the couch, putting his head in his hands. She was humming softly to herself and it occurred to him that doing what she did best made her honestly happy.

"I was right! There's a text file embedded in the second picture. Except this doesn't make any sense."

"Why?"

"It looks like poetry," she said, sounding bemused.

"Whose poetry?"

"Your missing kid's, maybe? It's nothing I recognize, at least. Though I won't claim to be a poetry expert."

He was already looking over her shoulder. "Pain centers, and I release myself. I diffuse. I become words."

"They will absorb me and what I have experienced, day and night over." murmured Kashiwabara. "Who would hide this? Besides the fact that it's so melodramatic."

"I have no idea."

"Which brings up another question. Why would he hide it that way?"

"What do you mean?" asked Tanaka.

"Well, first of all, if he hadn't included both pictures I'd never have thought of steganography. I would have been totally fooled if he had only included one. And if he wanted to, he could have just encrypted this file. There's encryption even I can't break, and no one would have figured it out unless he wanted them to. So why didn't he just do that?"

"I guess because he wanted someone to see it?" said Tanaka hesitantly.

"But he wanted them to work really hard for it," said Kashiwabara.

"Is there any way the poem itself is some kind of code?"

"It could be, because anything could be, but we might never know. Codes are impossible to break if you do them right."

"But we already suspect he didn't want it to be impossible," Tanaka pointed out.

"I'm not sure I'd even know where to start. Maybe it's just a little histrionic poetry. I'll look at the file some more, but I need a break first."

"Of course!" said Tanaka. Here she had been, doing all the work, and he hadn't even thought about it. He was just so focused on finding this kid.

She sat on the couch, her legs drawn up underneath her, looking tired. "No offense, but why are you so focused on this? It's someone else's case and it's not like you think they're incompetent, so what's up?"

 _Some things are easier to tell people when you probably won't have to face them again,_ thought Tanaka to himself.

"I have a brother. Ryouta. Growing up, it seemed like he was always in trouble. Shoplifting, vandalism. My family was ashamed. Finally he ended up in reform school."

He saw a look in Kashiwabara's eyes then, like she was anticipating a horrific end to this story. She'd probably be unimpressed.

"He was in and out of jail all his life, on petty charges, but right now he's in prison for stealing a car and I'm always thinking, couldn't I have done more for him? I remember one day he brought home a video game and I knew he didn't pay for it, and I could have said something, you know? I could have stopped him somehow."

"What about your parents?"

"They were all right, not great but not bad, but kind of distant. Like they expected us to raise ourselves once we got old enough. They really weren't traditional parents, and they were much older than usual when we were born. I could have been the one to raise Ryouta but I wasn't. I had my own plans, wanted to be a cop, and all I could think was that having a criminal for a little brother was going to screw all that up."

"Reasonable enough I guess. Does he blame you? Or expect you to get him out?"

"I don't know. I haven't spoken to him in six years. I only know where he is because I saw his name in the news."

Kashiwabara raised her eyebrows. "Wow. I really don't know what to say about that. If Nona ended up in jail Ennea would try to break her out, and the other way around. Not speaking to your own brother for six years--"

"All right, I'm terrible at dealing with family. My parents passed away about a year ago, one right after the other, and I did their funerals and that was it."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so harsh. It's really none of my business."

The funny thing was that Tanaka kind of wanted it to be her business, and now he had screwed that up too.

"You're right though. I guess you raised your daughters a lot better than our parents raised us."

"Maybe," she said. "Time will tell. So what you're saying is that you try to protect other kids because you failed to protect Ryouta."

Tanaka nodded. "Yeah, even I figured that one out. But what the hell, maybe I'm just a decent person. That could happen."

"Yeah, I think that's pretty likely. Look, I'm going to take another look at that flash drive."

She got up and Tanaka tried not to watch her body as she stretched and shook herself out. He wondered if she realized how much sensuality she displayed, even in ordinary clothes.

At first she sat at the computer, but then she said out loud, "Hey, wait!" and brought the flash drive back to the couch.

"What's going on?" Tanaka asked.

Kashiwabara grinned. "Old trick. I think there may be something else hidden here after all."

As he watched she took a small screwdriver and pried open the casing of the USB stick. A very small square object fell out.

"And I was right!" she said triumphantly, holding it up. "It's an SD card. I can read this right now."

She almost ran to the computer, Tanaka close behind her. Soon there was more text on the screen. But when Kashiwabara began to read it, she sighed.

"I have become what my father never said I could become. I have become the words, the poem. The unconscious has taken me up."

"More theatrics," grumbled Tanaka.

"No, this is real. Well, not exactly real, but-- did you ever hear of Emgreen?"

"No."

"Well, he or she was all over the internet in some circles years back, in a lot of languages too. No one ever knew it who it was, but they did a lot of talk about Jung and the collective unconscious. Which is sort of a mental system, in everyone, that relies on certain archetypes and symbols. These archetypes are the same for everyone. Kind of like how in all cultures you'll have a certain type of hero that just shows up, whether you're in Japan or across the world."

"I've heard of Jung," said Tanaka cautiously. "But how does that help us?"

"Well, some people think all Jung meant was that people's brains are wired a certain way, which is nothing so mysterious. But other people think he was talking about some kind of psychic connection everyone had, kind of a "world mind." And that's definitely what Emgreen thought."

"Sounds familiar," said Tanaka.

"Exactly. We can't discount this after what we've been through and what we've seen. Anyway, Emgreen's idea was that if a person could become words, words that would be a story or a set of symbols in the collective unconscious."

"Now that's just stupid. You can't become words."

"Not physically. But your mind, your consciousness. Like the idea some science fiction writers have that someday people will upload themselves onto the internet. They'll still exist, somehow. Just not physically."

"Except if you're a poem, how is that existence? Do people recite you, write you down?"

"Could be people wouldn't even recognize you're there, but you would be, somehow."

"That sounds horrible. Who the hell would want to do that?" asked Tanaka, punching his palm with his fist.

"An angsty teenager," said Kashiwabara quietly.

"I see your point. But if Kazuya did do this, did he do it by killing himself? Is it too late?"

"Emgreen never gave specifics. And I don't think anyone ever tried it -- or I didn't think so. But the idea was to access a large population and try to tune into the collective unconscious there. Then you would concentrate on your words, the words that expressed yourself. And if you were the right person at the right place, you would become something else entirely."

"And what would happen to your body?"

"I'm thinking nothing. But if you were really somewhere else mentally, then you wouldn't be taking care of yourself and--"

"Got it." Tanaka took a few moments to think. "All right, the poem thing is bullshit. No way do I believe that, not even with what we know about morphic fields from the Nonary Game. It's not the same. But, that still means this kid could be hidden somewhere, starving himself to death or something because the world is just too damn physical for him."

"Right, that's what I'm thinking too."

"So how do we find him?"

"That's the hard part. If you scroll down, the rest of this file is kanji. I'm good with kanji, but these don't make any sense."

"I passed the police kanji test," said Tanaka, squinting at the screen. "Yeah, you're right. That's just... it's like they're random. Except a lot of them are repeated. But they still mean random things. 'family,' 'water,' 'farm'..."

They both sat staring at the screen. Finally something jelled in Tanaka's mind.

"Can you print these out?" he asked her.

"Sure," she said. They ended up with twelve standard sheets of paper covered in kanji.

"Now give me a pen, please," said Tanaka. She handed him one, looking at him curiously.

Tanaka knelt on the floor with the paper in front of him. "See how a lot of these are repeated? Well, you can connect some of the repeated ones up."

He drew on the papers, making a system of lines. Then he spent a few moments rearranging the papers in different combinations.

"I thought so. I don't even know why I thought so, but I did."

Kashiwabara looked at the floor. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He put the cap back on the pen. "Doesn't look like anything to you?"

"Just a bunch of black marks," she said.

"It's part of the Tokyo subway system," he said. "Speaking of population centers."

"Holy crap, you're right," said Kashiwabara, looking impressed. "How did you figure that out?"

"The collective unconscious," said Tanaka. "Or maybe I have a brain after all."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I never said you didn't. But does this only mean he's somewhere here in Tokyo?" she asked.

"That's the problem, that might be exactly what it means."

"Are you going to go to your superiors with this?" she asked.

"With a lunatic story about people becoming poetry? And as proof I offer up being stuck on a boat in the desert for nine hours with a bunch of other lunatics?"

Kashiwabara raised her eyebrows until he muttered, "I didn't mean you."

She pointed at the middle of the papers. "Hey, the kanji for "poem" is repeated around this area," she said. "It doesn't make a line like the ones you drew, but it seems to be circling -- what place would that be?"

Tanaka frowned at the map. "I don't exactly have the system memorized myself, but I think that would be Kokkai-gijidomae Station."

"Don't people say all kinds of things about that place? Like that you can get into secret levels of the Diet Building through there?"

"Yeah, I always thought that was all crap. Not that I would know for sure. This has to mean something though."

"You could make some calls," said Kashiwabara.

"You think the government is going to suddenly admit to there being a sub-basement in the Diet Building because I tell them I think a teenage boy is hiding there?"

"I guess not."

Tanaka buried his face in his hands and sighed.

"Hey, wait!" said Kashiwabara. "Look at the kanji right where the station would be. I know we weren't looking at the meanings, but that one's a number, and the other two--"

"Two. East. Door." read Tanaka out loud. "So maybe a door on the second floor, in the east part. That's really not much to go on, but the station is only so big. And there wouldn't be many people there this time of night."

"We'll take my car," said Kashiwabara.

"No way. You're exhausted, and this is probably a wild goose chase anyway."

"Why do you think this kid is playing a game with this? If he wants to do it, why not just do it?" she asked.

"Sometimes things tie us to the earth no matter how much we want to leave."

"Now you're the poet," she replied.

"Maybe."

"What if this is bigger than we think? What if Zero is behind this or something?" she said contemplatively.

Tanaka laughed. "Zero loves games but I think our part in that game is over. Anyway if this were directed at us it would have come straight to us. This definitely isn't Zero. But it is a lost kid, and I'm going to find him."

"I'm just saying it could be dangerous."

"And I'm just saying I have a gun. Get some sleep and watch the news in the morning. Maybe I'll have him back with his parents by then."

Kashiwabara looked as if she were going to argue for a moment, but he could see the flutter in her eyelids that indicated tiredness.

"I guess I'll just wait then," she said uncertainly.

A woman unused to waiting. Tanaka almost smiled. "Hey, I'll see you tomorrow, when this is all over."

She put a hand on his shoulder, and he covered it with his own. "I'll be back," he said, and she nodded and watched as he put on his shoes.


	3. Chapter 3

The trains had stopped running, and the station was nearly deserted. Tanaka still moved through it cautiously, as if afraid he might be apprehended.

 _I'm a cop. What are they going to do, arrest me for loitering?_ he asked himself, though really he knew he could lose his job over this.

He rode the escalator down and began walking the perimiter of the station. Finally, in a small dirty corner, he found the outline of a door. It looked like an ordinary maintenance door, with a sign on it forbidding access and a lock in the doorknob.

Perhaps he should have gone to his supervisors. They would have opened this door, although they never would have believed him in the first place. Thankfully, he had his secret skill, the one he had perfected after the third time his parents accidentally left the door locked while they went out without them. Tanaka reached into his pocket and withdrew his lockpicks.

The door was surprisingly tough to open. If only for that reason, he began to suspect it wasn't an ordinary door. But Tanaka had practiced with the picks. He had always kept this skill carefully hidden from Ryouta, but he could unlock almost any door. He had often reflected to himself that if he hadn't been caught without his picks during the Nonary Game, the whole thing would have gone much differently.

Finally the door swung open and Tanaka faced a iron stairway, poorly lit and corroded. There was nowhere to go but down. He moved slowly, step by step, telling himself that if he ran he might fall. When he reached about the tenth step, he began hearing it.

 _in the hills before me at five years old, the perfect green and the city behind_

It was a voice in his mind, the voice of a poem, and he needed no one to tell him that it was Ito's voice. He kept going.

 _resting in the water with nothing to feel_

There was a door on the first landing, but Tanaka knew it was the wrong door.

 _a heart that holds answers to what was never asked_

The voice grew louder, melancholic lines filling Tanaka's consciousness. He went down five floors, moving faster and faster, until he reached another door. This one he knew was right. There was no lock, so he pushed it open. A corridor faced him, stretching long into the distance, so far that he couldn't even see the end from here. The walls were white and harsh lighting shone down from overhead. Tanaka began to run, the words in his head. He kept going, panting with exertion and hoping he would know his destination when he found it.

He passed a number of other blank doors, too many to count, until he reached one that was decorated with the kanji for "ending." He was probably under the National Diet Building at this point, in the secret sub-basements that weren't supposed to exist.

The door was unlocked. It led to a small room with blank yellow walls. On the floor lay the body of Ito Kazuya, pale and peaceful. Tanaka's heart pounded until he saw that the boy was breathing. He knelt by him and shook his shoulder.

"Hey, kid, wake up. You're being ridiculous. Game over."

Ito did not respond or shift position.

"Stop being theatrical," said Tanaka sharply, but it didn't help.

He didn't have the strength to carry him all the way up the stairs, and he was worried it wouldn't even help. In fact he was already certain what he should do, yet he wasn't sure it would work. He had to bring Ito back, and he could only think of one way.

Tanaka racked his brain, but all he could come up with was a few lines of "The Narrow Road to Oku." That wouldn't help. It wasn't his story.

Finally he sat near Ito, with his back against the wall, and closed his eyes, remembering the first time he had caught Ryouta stealing.

 _a sense of betrayal clanging_

 _you are my brother and you are lost_

His breathing shallowed as he tried to make pretty words of his life. How many memories did he have? Saving the children?

 _children taken for pride and for their dismay, madmen move_

And his own Nonary Game.

 _blood surrounds and the hours pass with too much of an ending to bear_

And Kashiwabara.

 _she moves with stealth and laughter, anger and life, without knowing me_

 _Damn it, I write worse poetry than a teenager,_ he thought to himself. But when he opened his eyes, he was somewhere else -- a large featureless place, a huge gray floor stretching into the distance with plae light coming from nowhere and no walls but darkness. Facing him was Ito Kazuya, sitting cross-legged with his eyes open.

"You weren't the one who was supposed to come," were the first words out of his mouth.

"Well, excuse me all to hell for trying to save your angsty teenage ass," retorted Tanaka, all pretense at poetry gone. "Who were you expecting?"

"My father," replied Ito. "I wanted that flash drive to go to my father."

"You should have left more specific instructions," said Tanaka. "Why were you so sure he could figure out your little puzzle anyway? That thing fooled the police."

"My father is a computer expert. And he is also a poet."

"Just because he's a poet doesn't mean he wants you to do some kind of dumbass thing like this."

"He is also Emgreen."

Tanaka looked at him in surprise, but remained silent.

"I overheard him telling my mother one night. He was wondering about what he had started, with the websites. "One day it will work," he was telling her. That was about when Emgreen toned everything down and disappeared."

"So you decided to do just the opposite of what your dad would want," said Tanaka.

"There's nothing for my dad but work and the collective unconscious. Now and then he suggests a college for me and then disappears back into his office. I'm surprised he even remembers my name."

"Last I heard your parents were frantic over you. Though I suppose that's your whole point here."

"I left the flash drive as a last resort, in case my dad finally realized he wanted me back." Ito replied. "I'm content to stay here, being my own words of myself, filtering through the mind forever."

"Your body will die eventually," said Tanaka.

"So will yours," replied Ito. "Eventually."

"I'm not leaving here without you," said Tanaka firmly.

"Do you even know how to get back? I don't."

Finally Tanaka felt something like fear. Could he be stuck here, under Tokyo, his body dying as whatever words he had left ascended? Ito might find that lovely and fitting but Tanaka found it disgusting.

He walked to Ito, leaned over, and looked closely into his eyes. "Listen. I don't know a lot but what I do know is that you keep trying. Every time. Poetry is fine and the collective unconscious is probably fine too but the bottom line is that world needs all of us. Someday someone's going to need you and if you're rotting under the Diet Building you're not going to be there. Am I making any damn sense?"

To his surprise, Ito flinched and stared back at him. He looked vulnerable, young. Tanaka told himself to wake up, to get out of this, to bring them both back to the world, but Ito was right -- he didn't know how.

Then he heard a voice, a real voice.

"Tanaka-san, if you die on me I will never forgive you. Wake up before I kick you just to see if you're still alive. And you know where I'll kick you!"

This time Tanaka opened his real eyes, back under the Diet Building. He was still propped against the wall. Kashiwabara was standing facing him, arms folded, looking furious. On the floor, Ito was blinking and stirring groggily. He sat up and stared at them.

Tanaka began to laugh and could not stop. Kashiwabara had to reach down and help him off the floor, with Ito staring at them as if they were insane.

"Why did you come? You knew it wasn't safe," he told her.

"After all we've been through together, you can still ask me that?"

He wanted to hug her, to kiss her, to brush her messy hair off her face and look at her as if he had never seen anything like her before. But first they had to leave.

"Are you coming with us, kid?" he asked Ito.

"I... I'll have to face my dad," he said.

He didn't offer Kashiwabara any explanation, but she just shrugged. "You should have thought about that before, you poor tormented soul. Now we're getting the hell out of here, whether anyone else likes it or not."

She marched out the door. Tanaka stood and helped Ito up. "That's Kashiwabara-san," he said. "She's kind of amazing and I suggest you do whatever she says."

Ito only blinked and leaned against Tanaka as they walked out the door to join Kashiwabara for the long walk up down the corridor and up the steps. She walked quickly and offered no further words as they walked. Tanaka watched carefully over Ito and thought to himself. He would be in trouble at work over this, and would probably have to tell Oshiro and the chief at least some of the truth. Ito would probably like to cover this up as much as Tanaka did but he looked like the type who was a lousy liar. Tanaka doubted he would lose his job, since the bottom line was that he had found Ito, but he did not know the future.

Meanwhile, he would bring Ito back to his family. For himself, he needed just a little sleep. When he woke up, he would write Ryouta. Kashiwabara was right, losing family was the wrong way to go.

And later, after careful negotiation, he might offer her that kiss.


End file.
